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England tried and failed …

England tried and failed with an Italian manager but Ireland’s Giovanni Trapattoni is already a success after getting them this far.

-Daily Mail, ROI vs Croatia preview.

There are a number of problems with this nonsense exceprt. Firstly, it by very essence attributes percieved failure to the fact the manager was Italian, which is utterly ignorant of the 45 previous years of England managers failing to win anything, which, excluding Sven, all happened to be English.

Secondly, it is operating under the assumption that Capello was a failure, depsite recording the best win percentage of any English manager ever, and qualifying for both major tournements something which managers (English ones lest we forget) failed to do for USA ’94 and Euro 2008.

The worst part of all this? This extract was presented as a matter-of-fact introduction to another game’s preview. Whether it is a case of having an agenda, not having enough relevant information or both it’s hard to say, but what is for certain is that this is a case of lazy and nonsensical journalism.